From Dhanbad to Bengaluru, wells in 10 cities to get a fresh lease of life with shallow aquifers Premium

Women in Jharia Circle dig a well for water, part of a national initiative to manage groundwater sustainably.

The women of Jharia Circle in Dhanbad, Jharkhand were desperate for water. They gathered in a local temple to figure out a solution and then decided to dig a well.

“Without any scientific background, they just knew that [if they] ‘dig a well here, we’ll get some sort of water’,” narrates Anirudh Soni, a research associate at the National Institute for Urban Affairs.

Initially, with the help of men, but later by themselves, the women dug a basic well. It was 25-feet deep, but not fully developed and hence dangerous, says Soni. The women stood on a bamboo mesh spread atop the hole to manually pull just one bucket of water at a time from the pit. One woman even fell into the hole and was seriously injured. Then the women heard about Eklavya Prasad’s team.

Prasad, from the public charitable trust Megh Pyne Abhiyan, was scouting sites in Dhanbad for the Shallow Aquifer Management pilot programme — a 10-city initiative overseen by Soni and his team. The programme, a part of the national Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) 2.0, was designed to bring a scientific understanding of groundwater management to cities across the country.

Prasad recalls that when the women learnt his team was in the same locality, they approached them and asked for help to improve the structure and safety of their basic well. It soon became one of the five sites in the city’s pilot efforts to recharge the region’s shallow aquifer — a groundwater resource that’s important for water supply, irrigation, and maintaining ecosystems. Dhanbad is the smallest city in the Shallow Aquifer Management programme (the other cities are Chennai, Hyderabad, Rajkot, Bengaluru, Gwalior, Jaipur, Kolkata, Pune and Thane). Construction of the recharge sites was completed in June 2024.

The local communities are seeing early evidence of their groundwater supply replenishing. The water level in one of the wells in Dhanbad rose 30 feet in just a month. “It’s remarkable, and it reminds us to have confidence in our own observations. It’s truly reassuring,” says Prasad.

During last year’s monsoon, the water level increased in three wells where shallow aquifer recharge projects were implemented. A further test will come during the dry season when the wells usually go dry. Prasad explains that by monitoring the water levels, they are gathering evidence and data on the efficacy of the Shallow Aquifer Management pilot in Dhanbad.